Wi-Fi Pioneer Cees Links: The Ultra-Connected Home Is Coming

In the late '90s, Cees Links led a team of engineers at Lucent to develop Wi-Fi. Links, now CEO of GreenPeak Technologies, is working on a new innovation called ZigBee, which he hopes will become the next generation of wireless technology to support smarter and more intuitive homes.

You were the person who sold Wi-Fi to Steve Jobs, which essentially changed the way the world communicates.

Steve Jobs understood the visionary aspects of Wi-Fi and said that wireless Internet was what he needed to make the Mac laptop special. However, he wanted the Wi-Fi radio to be smaller and less costly. I led the team that successfully achieved those engineering challenges. Once Steve Jobs put Wi-Fi in the laptop, all the other computermakers and gadgetmakers followed behind, jumping on the wireless networking bandwagon. And now, Wi-Fi is everywhere.

Just like Wi-Fi, ZigBee is a standardized wireless technology for home as well as for industrial applications. In many ways, ZigBee is a low-power, low-data-rate version of Wi-Fi. Like Wi-Fi, it can transmit a signal through walls, floors, furniture, etc. ZigBee uses the same basic security and anti-interference technologies as Wi-Fi, and uses the same radio spectrum as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth (2.4 GHz). But compared with Bluetooth, it offers much greater range and the ability to network various devices together, which Bluetooth does not offer.

How does ZigBee save power?

ZigBee is a low-power radio technology. Where Wi-Fi is power hungry and is designed to handle high-data-rate content like movies, broadband, streaming media, and audio, ZigBee is instead designed to send short messages from one device to another, and supports a very long battery life. And in some instances, ZigBee radios can operate without any power source at all.

What is the difference between the connected home and the smart home?

A connected home is a home connected to the Internet, as simple as that. One can also make a claim that a home can only be called connected if all the devices in the home are connected (via the gateway or set-top box) to the Internet. However, the smart home is a home where not only are the sensors connected to the Internet, but there is also a cloud-based application that interprets the information coming from the sensor. In other words, a sensor is not coupled to a specific application anymore.

You once said "Why are our cars so smart and our houses so stupid?" Why has it taken so long for our homes to catch up?

In modern cars, the driver has access to monitor a wide range of the vehicle's systems, from fuel to temperature inside and out, RPM, engine efficiency, tire pressure, and now even auto park and auto drive. Why don't we have these controls for our homes? Currently, some of the more sophisticated autos let you access some of these controls via smartphoneremotely unlocking doors, opening the hood, warming up seats, and starting the engine. We should be able to do similar tasks with our homes. The home 'sentroller' ecosystem (the technology of the sensors, controllers, and actuators) is in place within the home, but until recently there has not been a way to make them all talk to each other. That is what ZigBee does.

How close is today's smart home to a fully automated house, like what people saw on The Jetsons?

We are getting closer. The connected home is starting to be rolled out by the various cable TV and Internet service companies, leading with home security, HVAC, and health monitoring. Once these systems and easily installed accessories become popular, then the next step is the Web- or cloud-based control panel that allows the homeowner to program the various home systems to act autonomously.

You believe that eventually there will be 100 ZigBee devices in every home. That's a lot of devices. Where will they be?

One hundred might be a conservative number. Imagine an alarm sensor on every door and window on the home, as well as a ZigBee-controlled motor that can open/shut the window as well as lock it. Add to that the curtain controls, or the window shades, motion and identification sensors in every room, as well as temperature and humidity sensors. Now add personal health monitoring sensors sensors that indicate a senior citizen has fallen and can't get up. How about a sentroller system that responds to a dog whining and lets it out into the backyard to do its thing, and when it's done, lets it back in and locks the door behind it?

How easy will it be for homeowners to add on to the network?

It's all about standardization. Once the cable companies and broadband providers install the basic ZigBee network system in a home as a part of the set-top box, it's simple for the homeowner to go down to Home Depot and buy various accessories that connect easily. Also, as most of the devices will either be battery powered or generate their own power, the home owner doesn't need to worry about installing power to them or running power cords and power blisters.

First, you helped change computing. Now you want to change the way we live in our homes. What's next?

e expect that within 10 years or so, people will wonder: How did we ever survive without the ZigBee smart connected home? Nowadays, many of our younger generation never knew a world without Wi-Fi or cell phones. In the not-too-distant future, the smart connected home will become the standard.